Dive into OS X

Apple is preparing the iPhone launch on 29 June for the US and the company has previously promised a European release in the fourth quarter of this year.

In the US the device will be available only through mobile provider AT&T and stores owned by Apple Inc. Apple has previously said that it is looking for a single partner for the entire European market.

While there are far more choices in Europe (Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile, …), Apple seems to have angered potential partners. Several operators apparently already have written off the iPhone. This is because they found Apple ‘unbelievably arrogant’, making demands that ’simply cannot be justified no matter how hot the product is’. So Apple can be forced to choose a retail-only strategy when it launches its iPhone in Europe.

But selling the iPhone SIM free is not very likely because there are parts of the iPhone functionality that need service side support from a wireless operator (such as the visual voice mail).

The iPhone is due to go on sale in the US on June 29. And now, Apple has mentioned on their website that any consumer planning to buy the iPhone will need to have an iTunes Store account before he can activate the device. So, Apple will require customers to establish a separate account with its online media service in addition to one with AT&T Wireless Services, which has signed an exclusive US distribution deal for the iPhone.

This strategy is probably chosen to boost Apple’s iTunes usage and sales.

The company has announced plans for a European release in the fourth quarter of the year but has yet to provide details, such as whether the European version will operate on 3G (third-generation) networks. Alos, it is not known whether the same stipulation will apply, but this will most likely be the case.

Apple said today that it would make its Safari Web browser available for Windows-based PCs.
“What we’ve got here is the most innovative browser in the world and the most powerful browser in the world,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said during his keynote speech at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

Jobs also claimed that “Safari performs twice as fast as its competitors”.

Safari, which was released a few years ago for Apple’s Macintosh computers, has captured about 5 percent of the world’s browser market share with more than 18 million users, Jobs said. Internet Explorer, which is built into Windows, has a 78 percent share, while Firefox has climbed to 15 percent of the market, he said. Jobs continued by saying that allowing Windows users to download the browser will help boost market share the same way that making iTunes available for Windows users helped that application.

But the most important point is the fact that Apple’s upcoming iPhone will run Safari. That means, Jobs said, that any application designed to run on the Safari browser for Macs also would be fully compatible with the iPhone — Apple’s highly anticipated combination cell phone, iPod and wireless Web browser. The iPhone will be available in the U.S. on June 29.

The move to make Safari available to non-Mac users is not unprecedented: Apple also makes its iPod media players and iTunes Store for Windows. The strategy is aimed in part at drawing more people to its Macintosh computers. “It will create a much more significant consumer platform for the iPhone,” said Mike McGuire, a research analyst at Gartner, an industry research firm based in San Jose, Calif. This move indicates that Apple is increasingly confident in its ability to compete against Microsoft’s desktop computing monopoly.

The Safari news was unexpected; A test version of the program will be available beginning today for downloading from Apple’s Web site.

Much of the rest of the presentation focused on showing of 10 new features of the company’s Leopard version of the OS X operating system.